


the old trinitrotoluene

by Anonymous



Category: Minecraft (Video Game), Video Blogging RPF
Genre: A Distinct Lack of Self-Preservation, Angst, Canon Compliant, Gen, Hurt No Comfort, It's Not Paranoia If They're Really Out To Get You, Mental Health Issues, Paranoia, Sad Wilbur Soot, Sleep Deprivation, Suicidal Ideation (kinda), The Festival Arc, Villain Clay | Dream (Video Blogging RPF), please take a nap sir, villain isn't really the right word tbh but it's the tag that fits them both the closest in this, wilbur isn't a villain he's just got trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-15
Updated: 2020-10-15
Packaged: 2021-03-08 22:48:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,130
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27024553
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: Wilbur is going to end this cycle of vengeance and death by any means necessary, even if it kills him in the process. He has the necessary TNT.
Relationships: No Romantic Relationship(s), Toby Smith | Tubbo & TommyInnit, Toby Smith | Tubbo & Wilbur Soot, Wilbur Soot & TommyInnit
Comments: 8
Kudos: 98
Collections: Anonymous





	the old trinitrotoluene

When Wilbur places the last block of trinitrotoluene in his inventory, it almost feels like absolution.

Stacks of red-wrapped chemicals surround him as he sits in the empty space he’s dug out beneath what will, in mere days, no longer be the audience in front of Schlatt’s podium, all decked out for the festival in blackstone and magma. He stands on aching limbs, drained of energy from hours of work and Wilbur feels only satisfaction as he slumps down onto the ground, leaning his back against the stacks of explosives, armed and volatile where they sit unassuming.

Wilbur thinks it might be fun, just to see what happens, to be in this very place when the bombs go off. To sit right in the center of it all as the fire roars around him, shrapnel and debris flying about. He’s seen it before, the desolation caused by one man with a shit ton of TNT, running for his life as the ground detonated beneath his feet making each step infinitely more treacherous. That time, he didn’t have a chance to take it all in. There was no time for Wilbur to truly stop and appreciate the art in a good explosion, the bloom of the smoke and flame rocketing outward like a flower in double-time. He thinks that maybe, just maybe, he’ll find a nice spot right in the middle of everything to put his button, hole up here until Tubbo gives the signal for everything to blow. The colored fabric and oak wood decorations will be ripped apart, mixing in with the glowing red-orange of the flames as everything he fought so hard for is destroyed in a cavalcade of color and glory. 

Against his better judgement, his previous words, he tells Tubbo, tells the only other person that might— after Tommy— listen to him, hear him. Help him with his task. Even if he doesn’t, he’s still fond of him, still proud of him. And he needs him to know. He prays that Tubbo hasn’t betrayed him like the traitor Wilbur is, maybe was, so sure that he is. Wilbur, so badly, wants Tommy’s help, wants Tommy beside him as he lays the charges down under the seats. But Tommy is afraid, Tommy is reluctant. Maybe Tommy has betrayed him too. If he has, it doesn’t matter if he tells Tubbo his plans, it doesn’t matter if Tubbo doesn’t help him, it doesn’t matter if Tubbo runs to Schlatt and Quackity and George and—and— and tells them what Wilbur is planning to do on the day of the festival.

Originally, he wasn’t going to tell Tubbo, and was just going to give Tubbo the chance to choose not to speak, but that would be unfair to him. Tubbo would have no reason not to think about leaving the stage empty when the time came, and Wilbur wasn’t so heartless as to leave him without a hope. No matter what, he still wants Tommy and Tubbo to be safe, even if they betray him in the end like practically everyone else has. He just doesn't want them to stop him. Besides, even if they do betray him, he always has his favorite anarchist Technoblade on hand with his wither skulls and gunpowder and weapons at the ready.

It’s a bit of a struggle for him to not tell Karl about it while he’s there with him and Tubbo, to not hint at what he’s planning to do. Wilbur does his very best not to sing it from the rooftops with glee like some sort of fucked-up bird. He does, however, make bad puns about it, alluding to the fact that he, even now, is hiding within the floor of Manberg, TNT stacked in his inventory, the light of the torch burning against his sleepless eyes.

Wilbur's hands are trembling, and his skin tingles with every brush of his jacket against it. He almost wants them to know, wants them to anticipate his presence. He wants them to look for him, to see that he’s finally given up on taking his home back. He wants them to try and stop him before he can destroy everything, to see his purpose in his eyes and know that it is too late to stop him, that it had become too late the moment that the arrow struck him as he was driven from what had once been his home.

Once the two have wandered off, it’s painfully easy for Wilbur to slip away unseen through the riotous decorations, hidden from view by all the new additions for the day of the festival, the extra fuel for the fire from his bombs. He books it to Tubbo’s base, returning to Pogtopia down the tunnel that Tommy and Tubbo had made, which, though admittedly useful, had almost jeopardized them all, almost revealed the location of Pogtopia and its inhabitants. Schlatt and Quackity had nearly found them, had stood near meters from the base as Tubbo and he had cowered in fearful silence, terrified of discovery. They’d left, eventually, to announce the festival, but by the time they’d left, Wilbur’s nerves had been completely shot, left even more high-strung than before as he followed them back to Manberg, climbed the tower with Tommy to see the announcement in person. His hands had shook as he’d signaled Tommy not to shoot, eyes half-closed against the sun as the light burned inside his sockets. It would have been so _painfully_ easy to let Tommy shoot, but as they stood there, he’d had his realization. He’d finally understood. Tommy would martyr the man if they killed him now, took back Manberg now by slaughtering the democratically elected leaders of the country that was no longer theirs. If he didn’t die, they would still be the bad guys, still attempted assassins. No matter what happened in their little coup, no matter whether they defeated Schlatt or were defeated themselves, they’d lose. They’d die. That would be it.

He doesn’t want to fight anymore. The only way that will happen is if there is nothing left to fight over. When Wilbur is finished, everyone will die for Manberg one last time, and then there will be nothing to die for.

Wilbur stands at the end of the path and digs through the hastily placed cobblestone into Pogtopia, his ravine base. It’s almost painful, how even his long, thick coat doesn’t keep out the chill that soaks to his bones every second of every day now, unhelped by the lack of heat from the cold stone. Trembling, he returns to his room, his little sanctuary in a world that no longer wants him in it. God, he had been so good for so long, tried so hard every second of every day to build a better, happier, _safer_ world for those that he cared about and had placed under his self-imposed protection. And he’d failed miserably. Not one of the people he’d loved had been untouched by war and destruction. Nowhere he made was safe, not even Pogtopia, built out of stone in a hidden ravine far from Manberg. Schlatt had stood practically inside it, and all that Wilbur could think was _no, not again, not here. We were supposed to be safe here_. 

Well, more fool him for believing that he’d ever be comfortable.

L’Manberg was supposed to be safe, one single block of TNT couldn’t destroy them, but he’d been proven wrong. Eret could be trusted, they’d all be well-hidden in his secret bunker, but he’d been proven wrong. Once the war had ended, L’Manberg was supposed to be a haven, supposed to be free of strife, but he and Tommy were forced out at the point of an arrow. It was almost like he’d been cursed by some vengeful god, some angry spirit sent down to make his life utter hell, doomed always to be afraid and on edge. It seems that a great deal of them realized this eventually. Eret, obviously, but his son— but _others_ had as well. A few reveled in watching as Wilbur’s life was blown to pieces, and some had seemed to mourn as he burned, but none of them had followed him. 

He wondered sometimes, had Tommy not been exiled alongside him, if the boy would have followed him, carried him away as they were hunted people who had, moments ago, no cause to do them any harm. If his— his own _son_ had just laughed as they all lunged for him, bows and crossbows at the ready, what might Tommy have done? Would Tubbo have even considered turning spy? Would Wilbur have tried to fight back as he ran from his home, hunted in the land he’d built, this time alone and friendless?

Wilbur wanted everyone else to feel hunted in return, wanted everyone who had made him suffer, everyone who sided with those who did, hell, everyone who had chosen not to help him in his times of need to realize that nowhere, _nowhere_ was safe as everything they ever loved went up in smoke and flame. Wilbur wanted them to feel even a fraction of what he felt every second of every day, waiting for the next thing to go wrong, the next person to decide that his time was over and he had to be driven out or had to die.

The funny thing is- he thinks- the funny thing is that he’s doing the exact same thing that Dream did, back when they were fighting for L’Manberg’s life. He’s rigging the ground with trinitrotoluene and setting it off, razing it to the ground so that no one can have it, because he himself can’t. Wilbur is just being honest about it. He knows- he knows that what he is doing is wrong. He’s already the bad guy, already hated and exiled from the land he fought so hard for. He might as well just give them a proper, justified reason for wanting him dead the moment he sets foot on the lands of their Manberg. 

At least, this time, he’s ending the cycle. Dream wanted something left to hold onto, to keep from them, something with which to lord his victory. Wilbur doesn’t even want that. He just wants to see it all gone. He wants what used to be L’Manberg, what is currently Manberg, to be not even a ruin, just a blasted heath of dirt and stone with not even a memory left behind. He wants obsidian torn up, secret bases and bunkers dug out and gone, homes and businesses and public works projects and even archives and secret pathways gone without even an impression in the ground to suggest that something had stood where they did. No respawn points, no pets, not a single shred of unnaturally spawning life to suggest civilization.

There will be no Manberg left to fight over. 

Wilbur should clarify, he doesn’t want them to never build there again, in fact, Wilbur thinks the opposite. With Manberg gone, they could all start anew, the land returned to the greater Dream SMP, a fresh start, with no history and no baggage and no fucking visas needed to visit. No one could be exiled because it all belongs to Dream. No one would have to be forced out of their homes, no one would have to have their precious things taken, their pets killed in the crossfire, their homes and creations destroyed.

Dream’s big mistake, the reason the war raged on until Tommy handed over the disks, was that he left things that they could hold on hope to. Schlatt had been smart when he finished destroying the walls. Dream, this time, was right to leave the task to someone who knows just the kind of damage that TNT can do, just the way that it destroys. He’ll revel in the chaos, let Dream revel in his chaos, fuel the fire that they both now thrive on.

For now, Wilbur just sits on his bed in Pogtopia, the undyed wool a stark white against the charcoal-ash grey fabric of his jacket and the rough stone walls. There’s nothing for him to do but wait now, all the charges laid and set and waiting for him to press a single button to send it all sky high. He has all the time in the world, and Wilbur thinks, for a moment, that it might just do him well to sleep, to drive away the Phantoms that he sees above the trees as he walks the forest at night, swooping and diving in dizzying circles, their skeletal patterned flesh and tattered wings visible in the moonlight.

It’s going to be a long, cold night for Wilbur, and he could always use more trinitrotoluene.


End file.
